FABRIC CONSULTING

Scale your data platform

from the team behind HowToPowerBI

Fabric unifies data engineering, warehousing, and Power BI on one capacity. We design it, migrate to it, and hand it to your team

/01IS THIS YOU

Three signs your team
is ready for Fabric.

Fabric is not for everyone right now, and we will say so. These are the teams that get the most out of moving.

You are hitting Power BI's ceiling.

Reports crawl, refreshes fail overnight, and the workarounds keep stacking up. You need a real data platform, not another patch on top of the old one.

Your stack is sprawling.

Data Factory, Synapse, SQL, and Power BI each run, bill, and get governed on their own. Fabric folds that into one environment on a single capacity.

Governance cannot be an afterthought.

Regulated data, enterprise clients, tight security reviews. Fabric gives you one policy layer across the whole estate instead of four sets of rules to reconcile.
Self-diagnostic
CAPACITY 98% REFRESH FAILED SERVICES 7 SEPARATE BILLS POLICY 4 0 SHARED

/02WHAT IS FABRIC

Power BI was the start.
Fabric is what sits underneath it.

One platform for data engineering, warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, and Power BI. All of it on OneLake, under a single governance model.
The Fabric platform Six workloads, one lake
Data Factory
Data Engineering
Data Warehouse
Data Science
Real-Time
Power BI
OneLake One copy of your data, governed once, read by every workload above.

/03WHAT YOU WALK AWAY WITH

Five things that go live
in your environment.

Not advice and not a roadmap to follow on your own. These are the artifacts running in production when we hand off.

✓

A live Fabric workspace

Your production environment, capacity-sized correctly, with governance and a security model in place. Running before we leave.

✓

Direct Lake semantic models.

Built natively on OneLake. No import-mode refresh windows, no overnight schedules that quietly break at 03:00.

✓

Migrated pipelines, lakehouses, and reports.

Your existing work, rebuilt to Fabric-native architecture. Each piece is tested in parallel before cutover, so nothing goes live unproven.

✓

A team trained to run it.

Hands-on enablement on Fabric admin, Direct Lake modeling, and Copilot. Your people are self-sufficient by handoff day, not three months later.

✓

Documentation and support

Architecture decisions, data-flow diagrams, and runbooks. Plus a direct line to the team, for the questions that only surface in production.

Not sure Fabric is the right move yet?

That is exactly what the assessment is for. We look at your stack and tell you honestly, including when the answer is wait.

/04WHAT WE CAN HELP WITH

Whatever your Fabric challenge is
we have probably solved it before.

Architecture & OneLake
Governance & Security
Modeling & Reporting
Data Engineering & Pipelines
Real-Time & AI / Copilot

Modeling & Reporting

Where the value shows up for the business. Direct Lake semantic models on OneLake, a clean DAX measure library, and Power BI reports built with the HowToPowerBI design method on top.

What we deliver
  • Direct Lake semantic models
  • DAX measure library and optimization
  • Report design and reusable theme system
  • Mobile-responsive layouts
SalesTargetsValueYeardimEmployeeEmployee NameIs SalespersonEmail AddressdimDateDateFiscalYearMonthdimSupplierSupplierNameBankAccountNameCategoryForecastCustomerCategoryPeriodTotal SalesfctSalesOrderIDOrderDateFulfillment TimeQuantityfctPurchasesPurchaseOrderIDOrderDateOrderedOutersdimCustomerCustomerIDCreditLimitAccountOpenedDatedimStockItemStockItemIDBrandLead Time DaysfctSalesAGGCustomerIDEnd of MonthQuantityAGG · ready
Performance
8.4s → 0.9s
DAX query time
Model size-62%
Refresh12m → 3m
Relationshipsclean

Governance & Security

Set up so the right people see the right data and nothing leaks, then documented so your admins can run it without us. Row-level security, sensitivity labels, Purview, and deployment pipelines.

What we deliver
  • Row-level and object-level security
  • Sensitivity labels and Purview integration
  • Deployment pipelines and workspace structure
  • Access model and admin runbook
Row-Level Security
fctSales RLS on Sales DE Region = DE Sales FR Region = FR Executive All regions

Architecture & OneLake

The foundation everything else sits on. We lay out OneLake, set the medallion layers, decide lakehouse or warehouse per use case, and size the capacity to what you actually run. Coming off Synapse, Databricks, or Power BI Premium? The migration path gets planned here too.

What we deliver
  • OneLake and medallion architecture
  • Lakehouse and warehouse setup
  • Workspace and capacity sizing
  • Migration plan off Synapse, Databricks, or Premium
Fabric Lakehouse · Medallion
GoldReport-ready
RevenueMarginForecast
Power BI · Direct Lake
↑
SilverCleaned & modeled
↑
BronzeRaw ingested

Data Engineering & Pipelines

Getting data into OneLake cleanly and on time. Data Factory pipelines, Dataflows Gen2, and Spark notebooks that replace the overnight jobs quietly failing at 03:00.

What we deliver
  • Data Factory pipelines
  • Dataflows Gen2 ingestion
  • Spark notebooks and transformations
  • Orchestration and monitoring
Data Factory Pipeline
03:00 pl_daily_load running Copy activity Azure SQL to OneLake queued Dataflow Gen2 clean and shape queued Spark notebook enrich and model queued OneLake waiting

Real-Time & AI / Copilot

The newer side of Fabric. Eventstreams and KQL for data that cannot wait for a nightly refresh, plus Copilot and data science workloads set up so your team can actually use them, not just demo them.

What we deliver
  • Real-Time Intelligence with eventstreams and KQL
  • Live dashboards and alerts
  • Copilot enablement in Fabric and Power BI
  • Data science notebooks and ML models
Real-Time Intelligence
Live KQL · eventstream live threshold COPILOT Monitoring eventstream. 12.4k events per minute, all nominal.

/05HOW WE WORK

From assessment to 
full deployment.

Week 1 - 2

01

Fabric Readiness Assessment

We audit your current stack: semantic models, Azure infrastructure, data sources, governance, and team capability. You leave with a clear picture of what migration looks like for your situation and a business case you can put in front of leadership.

Data Audit
Architecture Review
Cost Modeling
Readiness Score

Week 3 - 5

02

Architecture Design

We design the Fabric architecture: workspace structure, OneLake layout, medallion layers, capacity planning, and the security and governance framework. Every choice is documented and reviewed with your team before any build starts.

OneLake Design
Medallion
Capacity Planning
Security Model

Week 6 - 14

03

Implementation and Migration

We build and migrate in sprints: pipelines, lakehouses, semantic models, reports. Your existing environment stays live the whole time. Each sprint ships testable components, and your team works alongside us so the knowledge transfers as we go.

Lakehouse Build
Pipeline Migration
Direct Lake
Sprint Reviews

Week 15 - 16

04

Cutover and Enablement

A controlled cutover with no downtime. We train your data engineers on Fabric administration and your BI developers on Direct Lake and Copilot, then hand over full documentation and a 30-day support window.

Live Cutover
Admin Training
Developer Enablement
Documentation

/06CLIENT RESULTS

What this looks like 
in practice

Case study · Aviation

Compliance the whole airport can prove

2 areas one shared model Daily refresh
Case study · E-commerce

Ad spend and revenue in one picture

6 → 1 sources unified 0 manual exports
Case study · Electricity Plant

From SAS to Power BI, validated to 100%.

100% reconciled to legacy SAS → Power BI migrated 0 manual exports In-house team trained

/07WHERE WE HAVE WORKED

We've led projects
in your domain

17+ industries across Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
Analytics is not one size fits all, so we don't treat it that way.
FMCG Telecom Banking & insurance Pharma & life sciences Energy & utilities Travel & tourism Management consulting Retail & e-commerce Public sector NGOs Legal & tax Real estate & construction Finance & controlling HR Sales & marketing Supply chain Risk & procurement

We tell you honestly whether Fabric is right for you now.

We review your stack, talk through your goals, and either propose a phased plan or tell you to hold off. We would rather lose the engagement than start one that will not succeed.

/08FAQ

Do we need to move everything to Fabric at once?
No - and we'd caution against it. We always recommend a phased approach, starting with a contained pilot (one business area, one data domain) that proves value before expanding. Your existing Power BI environment stays live throughout the entire engagement. The cutover is controlled, tested, and happens only when you're confident.
We already have Power BI Premium. Do we need Fabric?
Power BI Premium gives you great reporting capabilities, but Microsoft Fabric goes much further. Fabric unifies your entire data stack - from ingestion and transformation to warehousing and analytics - all in one platform. If you're managing data across multiple tools today, Fabric eliminates that complexity and reduces cost. Think of it as the natural evolution of your Premium investment, not a replacement.
How does Fabric affect our existing Power BI reports?
Your existing Power BI reports continue to work without any changes. Fabric is fully backward compatible - all your current datasets, dashboards, and reports remain intact. 
What does a typical Fabric engagement cost?
Every engagement is scoped based on your specific environment, data complexity, and business goals. Most clients start with a pilot engagement before committing to a full rollout. Once we start, we keep you fully in the loop at every stage. You get access to a daily progress tracker so you can see exactly where things stand at any point in time.
Do we need a data engineering team internally?
Not necessarily. We design our engagements to match your internal capabilities. If you have an existing IT or BI team, we work alongside them and upskill them throughout the project. If you don't, we can build and operate the solution on your behalf, and transition it to you when you're ready. The goal is always to leave you self-sufficient.
Is Fabric mature enough to use in production now?
Yes. Microsoft Fabric reached General Availability in November 2023 and is already being used in production by thousands of enterprise customers globally. Microsoft is investing heavily in the platform, with frequent feature releases and enterprise-grade SLAs.